About

I'm Michael Toth. I'm a writer and a data science consultant.

Here are some of the places my data science writing has been featured:

These days, I'm focused on 3 things:

Consulting	Blogging	R Training
I can help you tackle your analytics challenges and get data-driven answers to your biggest business questions. Contact me for more information.	Every month I help over 5000 people learn R programming, build their data science careers, and develop new skills through this blog.	I will help you boost the data capabilities of your team. Contact me for more information.

It's been a long road getting to where I am today

Originally hailing from the great state of Ohio, I turned east for college.

I spent four years in Philadelphia at The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2011, I graduated magna cum laude with studies in statistics, economics, mathematics, and finance.

Then I moved to New York where I began my career at BlackRock, the world's largest financial asset manager. While at BlackRock, I helped some of the largest commercial banks in the United States to value and stress test their financial portfolios.

I enjoyed the work I was doing at BlackRock. But ever since college, I'd had a nagging itch to get into a job using my statistics background.

When I graduated in 2011, data science wasn't really a thing, but by 2014 it was a growing field, and I was ready for a change. But I didn't really know any programming. So I spent my nights and weekends studying R and figuring out how to become a data scientist.

At some point during these studies, with no particular goals in mind, I started this blog. That decision has been by far the best decision of my career.

You see, I latched onto a fundamental truth that is easy to forget when you've got your head down studying: you don't need to be a world-class expert to get a job as a data scientist. You just need to be able to do the things expected of you.

So when I was looking for my next job, I decided to put that to the test. I found a company called Orchard that was looking to hire a data scientist. This company specialized in online lending analytics, something similar to what I was already working on at BlackRock. So I found a public Lending Club data set, did some analysis of the data in R, and wrote up a post about it on this blog.

That blog post proved I had the skills to do what they needed me to do. I didn't need to convince them.

Now, I think of it as the blog post that launched my career, because that blog post secured me my first job as a data scientist.

Getting that first full-time job as a data scientist was what I needed to really take my skills to the next level. The reality is, you're never going to know everything, and on-the-job learning is one of the most important parts of being a data scientist. I'm still learning new things every day, and you should be learning new things every day too!

I'm not a business expert, a 10x developer, or an artificial intelligence guru

I don't know everything.

If you want to understand the cutting edge machine learning models or learn about hyperparameter tuning your neural network, you're not going to find it here.

But if you want to master the core skills you need to become a data scientist, learn how to market yourself, and grow your data science career, then I can help you.

I'm a master of cutting away the bullshit that doesn't matter to focus on the things you need to achieve your goals.

If you're still with me, thank you. You're clearly committed to improving as a data scientist. I will help you learn R programming, build your data science career, and raise your salary.